This weekend I attended a small tournament for the new edition of Horus Heresy, also known as 30K. It was held at 2,500 points for the maximum army size, with lists limited to a single Primary Detachment from the Crusade Force Organisation Chart. No Primarchs, Lords of War, or Allied Detachments of any sort were allowed. This kept the lists within the realm of approximiately balanced and simple enough to comprehend. Most of the attendees seemed to know the rules well enough, but none of us were dyed in the wool experts, so the simpler the lists and rules interactions, the better.
As it happened, in three games I never had one go into the fourth battle round (game turn, if you prefer) in the 2.5 hours set aside for them. Had the lists been set to 1500 points I think we may have finished more games. All of mine had to be settled by less than optimal haphazard points allocating, once even after my opponent had gotten two turns and I had had only one.
I brought a 2,500 point list of White Scars to the event comprising:
Praetor on Legion Spatha bike
Stormseer Consul
Champion Consul
2 Tactical squads of 10 models, one with dedicated Rhino transport
1 Scout squad of 5 models
2 Indomitus Terminator squads of 5 models
1 Indomitus Terminator squad of 10 models
1 Veteran squad with dedicated Rhino transport (Champion joined)
1 White Scars Dark Sons of Death squad of 5 models (Stormseer joined)
1 Outrider squad of 10 models (Praetor joined)
I ran this list using the Sagyar Mazan Rite of War, which gave me some respectable buffs while only placing limits on me that were all too easy to abide by, given what I had available and painted to choose from during list construction.
I played against Word Bearers, Emperor's Children, and Iron Hands. Also present were second armies of the Word Bearers and Emperor's Children, and an Imperial Fists army. There was another person who registered who probably would have had Space Wolves, but who was a no-show.
My record, as such, was 1-2 on the day, with the win against Iron Hands. Both losses, I will say, were decided by a single point of Attrition (I had lost one more unit than my opponent had when the game was called). I think this was a respectable showing for the list above.
I came to this list by a process of testing and rebuilding my prospective tournament list over a week and a half leading up to the tournament, playing out solo games against a cobbled together Opposing Force of Word Bearers from my other various collections of painted sci-fi soldiers.
Originally I had thought not to run any Rite of War, and had included a Predator, Vindicator, and Land Raider Explorator in the list. Running it with a couple of Tactical squads required me to paint up a couple of guys holding bolters (as this is a 40K army, my Tactical squads for that system include heavy and special weapons not permitted in this one). I also decided to knock out another guy with bolt pistol, chainsword, and jump pack, so that all of my Dark Sons of Death could be WYSIWYG. That unit didn't end up being used to much benefit, but I'll get to that.
Testing against my hard-as-nails Word Bearers OpFor list, which for brevity's sake I'll suffice it to say had two Contemptors and a unit of Gal Vorbak led by Argel Tal, revealed both of those to be major weakness of the army. But, I had noticed that my unit of Veterans (which I did not mix in among the Tacticals due to their black Ebon Keshig-style armor) were much better in game than I had expected, having a better WS, more wounds, and more attacks than the Tactical squads.
So, I decided to lean into them and re-tooled the list into one using the Pride of the Legion Rite of War, which then limited me to only a single Fast Attack choice and Heavy Support choice. This meant first combining my two units of 5 Outrider bikers into one unit of 10, then dropping my Attack Bikes and Land Speeder, as well as the Predator and Vindicator. I kept the Land Raider Explorator in this version.
That list still could not effectively deal with the Contemptor problem. They would get to the Land Raider before it could kill them with its Lascannons. My solution to that was to not give any opposing Dreadnoughts any juicy targets--I would remove the Land Raider which wasn't getting the job done, and instead bring in a squad of Terminators with Thunder hammers as my anti-vehicle and anti-dreadnought tool. I have 6 models with hammers and shields, so I added to them 4 with dual lightning claws, mostly as ablative wounds, and redid the list again.
By now I had finished painting the models I needed to run two 10-man Tactical Squads. This new list, above, seemed to really lend itself to the Sagyar Mazan Rite, which grants all infantry a 5+ Feel No Pain, and Fearless on the turn they charge. Couple that with the Heroes Never Die warlord trait that is exclusive to the White Scars, and you may have an entire army that is flat out Fearless (and thus auto-passes all Morale and Pinning tests) for most of the game, should the warlord be killed early and in line of sight of the rest of your models on the table. This exact thing happened to me up against the Emperor's Children. Which brings me to my next topic--the utility of certain units.
Even in a big 10-model block (11 with the Praetor), Outriders just melt under any amount of pressure. Coming to this game from 40K, I'm used to my bikers being tougher than infantry, with triple the amount of wounds, to boot. No, these guys have the same 4 Toughness as anyone else, and only a single wound. They also shoot half the shots, but that's another subject. This is how my Warlord died in the first round one game, granting the entire army Fearless for the rest of that game. I have learned that they can put out a decent amount of bolter fire, but that they shouldn't really commit to combat with anything more numerous than them and definitely not anything with a higher weapon skill, like say a unit of Veterans. When and if I get around to painting a unit of actual Heresy-era units for White Scars, I don't know if I'll use these guys much, when there will be jetbikes to choose over them.
I was also kind of let down by the Stormseer and the Dark Sons of Death I had accompanying him, though that's probably mostly due to the former's Psychic Weapon. See, it's both Heavy and Barrage, which effectively means he has to stand still in order to fire it. I kept trying to get it to do any good, and so kept leaving the whole unit just sat where they deployed all game. The idea is that the Stormseer is calling down lightning to zap entire areas of the battlefield. It's a 5" large blast, so it scatters, of course. That I can live with. It starts out as S4, though, which is really not great. You can buff it to S8, which is a lot better, but even if you do so, it's still AP 4, which I have to say, sucks. It's also got the Force and Shock Pulse special rules, which can be pretty good against Corrupted (Gal Vorbak et al) and Dreadnoughts, but good luck getting your single hit on a Dreadnought through it's 2+ armor save! The possibility to Instant Death daemonic units aside, I can only imagine the power would be at all dependable against massed Imperial Army-level mortal opposition. Against single-wound marines it could maybe get a couple of kills, but you couldn't rely on it. Anyway, you could fairly say my Stormseer and Dark Sons were both wasted on trying to get any utility out of this power that I had give me Perils I think three times over three games. At least the Dark Sons saw use as ablative wounds for that, I suppose.
Now for the bright spots. The Legion Champion consul is awesome. You can use him to call out and kill pretty much any character on the other side, including enemy Praetors. Veterans are really good, as I mentioned above. Terminators, also good. Thunder Hammers are your only hope as far as melee weapons for infantry trying to take down a Dreadnought. Aside from Melta bombs, maybe. The humble Tactical Squad, very very good! Fury of the Legion combined with the Return Fire or Overwatch reactions. Very enjoyable. The scouts were able to Concuss enemy units (with Astartes Shotguns), and thus make them fight at -1 WS during the next Assault phase. This is immensely good, if you can pull it off.
The event was a ton of fun. All the guys I met were just happy to be there playing this cool new game.
Going forward, I'm hoping to hobby up my Alpha Legion to the point where I can take them as my main Horus Heresy force. I'll keep the Scars on the back burner as far as 30K goes. I've got more Word Bearers already painted for this system than anything, but already seeing two guys playing them at an 8-person event? I'll focus on my Alpha Legion, which I've been wanting to do for a long while, awaiting the release of this game. I have Headhunters on the painting desk right this moment, and Tactical Squads and Contemptors and Terminators and tanks galore to do later, too.
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